{"id":2392,"date":"2008-03-18T20:10:15","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T20:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/18\/plot-synopsis-project-and-the\/"},"modified":"2008-03-18T20:10:15","modified_gmt":"2008-03-18T20:10:15","slug":"plot-synopsis-project-and-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/03\/18\/plot-synopsis-project-and-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Plot Synopsis Project, and the Problem with LiveJournal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua Palmatier<\/a>, whose first two books I enjoyed, and probably ought to booklog, has organized the “Plot Synopsis Project,” in which a bunch of published SF authors post copies of the plot synopses they sent with their successful novel pitches, and talk about the writing process. Most of them have lists of the participants posted, but here’s a link to Tobias Buckell’s post<\/a> because he has just the list, independent of his plot summary, so you don’t need to worry about accidentally reading spoilers.<\/p>\n

This is a terrific idea, as the plot synopsis thing is one of the more mysterious and intimidating parts of the whole try-to-sell-a-novel process. I don’t have a novel to try to sell, but I’ve always found it very helpful to have a few examples to look at before trying to write in a form that’s new to me, so I’m sure this will be very useful to aspiring writers.<\/p>\n

There’s just one problem: It’s been put together by a person from LiveJournal, and people in LiveJournal land have never really grasped the concept of the permanent link. Possibly because the default settings for the software make it fairly difficult to find<\/strong> the correct URL, or maybe because that have that little feature that automatically inserts a link given only a username. Whatever the reason, LiveJournal people tend to just link to the front page of whatever journal they’re pointing to, and it drives me nuts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Take, for example, C.E. Murphy. Her plot synopsis post, for her novel Urban Shaman<\/cite> (which I also enjoyed, but haven’t posted about) is here<\/a>. The link in Toby’s post, however, goes to the front page of her LiveJournal<\/a>, where the plot synopsis is already the third post down. It’s not even on the first screen on my fairly large monitor.<\/p>\n

Somebody going there to look for the plot synopsis is going to have to scroll down to find it, mere hours after it was posted. Somebody going there to look for it a three days from now will probably have to sift back through the archives. Or, more likely, they’ll just surf away again, because it’s a hassle to find the relevant post.<\/p>\n

Why this particular behavior is so prevalent on LiveJournal, I have no idea. Regular blogs long ago got used to the idea of linking directly to archive pages, and while linkrot is still a problem (particularly since both Blogspot and Movable Type are prone to trashing site databases), they’re almost always good for a few weeks or a month. LiveJournal has never gotten the memo, though, and it’s maddening. If I go out of town for two days, I don’t even bother trying to follow links in most LiveJournal posts, because none of them go anywhere useful.<\/p>\n

This is not a knock on Joshua Palmatier specifically, or any of the other authors involved– I applaud what they’ve done with this. The problem is, the way these links have been posted turns what could be a really good resource for aspiring writers into a really good resource with the shelf life of unpasteurized milk.<\/p>\n

But that’s just how things are done in LiveJournal land.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua Palmatier, whose first two books I enjoyed, and probably ought to booklog, has organized the “Plot Synopsis Project,” in which a bunch of published SF authors post copies of the plot synopses they sent with their successful novel pitches, and talk about the writing process. Most of them have lists of the participants posted,… Continue reading Plot Synopsis Project, and the Problem with LiveJournal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-sf","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}